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The HCA Pricing Tools are used by professional house cleaning companies to estimate the standard time it takes a team of professional cleaners to clean an occupied residence on a recurring basis. The HCA Pricing Tools provide time and price estimates for: 1) an initial cleaning, 2) one-week interval; and 3) two-week interval. The Member Versions of the HCA Pricing Tools allow the owner of a house cleaning company to control the output of the Pricer from the HCA Member login. The HCA Pricing Tool has three formats: |
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HCA Desk-Top Pricer: used to provide a quote over the phone, as well as to perform variation analysis for actual cleaning times. |
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The Desktop Pricer -Member Version is available to HCA Members under their normal Member logins; this version allows users to input real house cleaning assignments as "Scenarios" and save input values. The input values under the Member Version are saved in the Member's database and control the outputs for the Hand-held Pricer and the Website Pricer Control. The default values for all Member Pricers (excludes the free Pricer) are based on the HCA Pricing Tool values which are derived from the HCA Pricer Statistical Study. For more information about becoming an HCA Member, visit Member Benefits. |
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HCA Hand-held Pricer: during an in-home quote, a Company's representative surveys the prospective customer's home and inputs observations in the Hand-Held Pricer, which is a special purpose web-page accessed by any web-enabled hand-held device, like a phone or PDA. The output values of the Hand-held Pricer are influenced centrally by coefficients set in the Desk-Top Pricer. |
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HCA Website Pricer: this control can be added to a House Cleaning Company's website. Homeowners and prospective customers visit a Company's website and can enter values to get an idea of the company's prices by completing the survey themselves. Of course the results are only as good as the inputs, so most companies which use the Website Pricer Control include disclaimers about it being a "Ballpark Price" which can differ from the actual quote, as it is depending on values entered by the homeowner. Aside from the values input by the homeowner, the output values of the Website Pricer Control are also influenced by coefficients set in the Desk-Top Pricer by the operator of the house cleaning company. |
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The practical application of the HCA Pricing Tools depends on the owner and the Company's estimator having an identical and thorough understanding of definitions and scoring. The most common scoring mistake by beginners is reversing the scoring. In other words, if a house has very high traffic, should I score it with a lifestyle value of -8 or +8? The correct answer is +8, and the best way to remember this is to think of the value in terms of added man-minutes: really high traffic = higher man-minutes, longer time to clean, which equates to a higher score. This is why, for all Usage Variables, John Belushi's home always scores higher than Doris Day's home. |
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HCA defines man-minutes as the elapsed cleaning time by a team (in minutes) multiplied by the number of persons on the team. Cleaning time by a team includes the time it takes to enter a home, and exit with equipment and supplies. Thus, if a company uses tracking devices, vehicle movements can provide a good proxy for cleaning time. |
